INTRO:

How far would you go to speak to someone you’ve lost? Would you travel across a threshold, knowing it’s likely you’ll never return? Would you risk spending eternity in a dangerous world full of beings who want to snuff out your very soul? If you’ve experienced grief, you already know the answer. That’s because grief is so painful, you can’t imagine hurting more, so you feel like you have nothing left to lose. That’s Heartworm, a retro-inspired survival horror game that throws you into this otherworld, and you’re not leaving until you get some answers.

I’m James with Horror100. I only review horror games after getting 100% of the achievements. Also, I’ll never accept a review copy or a sponsorship in the industry. You’ll get honest takes on games I bought myself and played all the way through multiple times. You can verify this on my Steam profile here.

You play as Sam, a young woman consumed by grief after the death of her grandfather. She falls down an internet rabbit hole searching for ways to contact the dead, spending her days and nights scouring forums, chasing leads, and looking for anything that might ease the pain. Eventually, she discovers a message board discussing a house in the mountains with connections to the afterlife, a threshold between our world and the next. There’s a problem: no one who’s visited this house has ever returned. Sam doesn’t care. She’s willing to risk losing herself in our reality in order to find closure.

This is a 4-6 hour experience with multiple endings, fixed camera angles that evoke Resident Evil and Silent Hill, PS1-era aesthetics complete with retro visual filters, and, like Fatal Frame, a camera as your primary weapon instead of the traditional guns and knives of survival horror.

SETTING & ATMOSPHERE:

Heartworm creates a persistent sense of dread and unease. You have two options that you can experience it with: a clean modern look that presents the game with sharper clarity, or a retro PS1 filter with pixelation and visual effects that call back to the original PlayStation era. I played with and without the retro filter, and there are merits to both, with the filter having a slight advantage as it sells the throwback aesthetic perfectly; the low-poly character models, the environmental detail, the way cutscenes render with that chunky PS1 look. And here’s a nice touch that shows attention to detail: the main menu displays a copyright date of 1998, which is a cool easter egg that shows commitment to the aesthetic. It’s these small touches that make you feel like you’re playing a lost game from that era.

Heartworm is different from most other retro horror games in its use of color. Instead of a foggy gray palette that most games lean on when trying to imitate Silent Hill, Heartworm brings richer colors, like the lush greens in the cornfield area, and there’re stark contrasts between light and shadow. The world feels more alive, more vibrant, yet still wrong. It’s an approach that keeps the atmosphere unsettling without visual monotony.

As I mentioned, the game uses fixed camera angles during exploration in classic Resident Evil style. When you pull out your camera to fight, the view switches smoothly to an over-the-shoulder perspective. The transition feels natural, and it allows you to peek into areas the fixed angles don’t reveal, which is a smart modernization of the classic formula.

The environments themselves are distinct and memorable, each with its own identity. You’ll explore an old house perhaps similar to PT, which, unfortunately, I’ve not played. The house serves as your gateway to “beyond”, and it’s got the same labyrinthine quality where you’re constantly unlocking new areas with keys and puzzles and backtracking through familiar halls. There’s a neighborhood with intersecting streets, a baseball field, a small store, and an overpass where you catch glimpses of the boss you’ll fight later. The wilderness section seems sprawling, at least at first, with multiple roads to traverse, a boat that serves as a shortcut to a save room, a lookout with a telescope, a watermill area, and dark caves that feel oppressive. And then there’s the surreal clock tower that blends hotel, hospital, and school aesthetics in ways that feel like a nightmare. Different rooms connect in impossible ways. The architecture doesn’t make logical sense. Each location has its own visual identity, and the clock tower in particular leans into the surreal quality that fits the game’s themes about memory and grief distorting reality. It’s also heavily inspired by the mansion in the original Resident Evil. If you know, you know.

The audio design supports the atmosphere without overpowering it. The score is melancholic, with sparse orchestration that reinforces the emotional weight of Sam’s journey. It’s quiet, mournful, and introspective. This isn’t a game trying to scare you with sudden musical stings or loud noises. Instead, it uses ambient cues, like the patrolling of wolves just out of sight, to create fear. Enemies that look like they’re made of static electricity crackle in empty halls, distant sounds you can’t identify at first, but with time become disturbingly familiar. It’s atmospheric horror, and that approach works beautifully for a game about grief.

STORY & THEMES:

Heartworm tackles grief in a way that feels raw. The game confronts the reality that some questions about death and loss simply can’t be answered; they can only be endured. There’s no magic solution to make everything okay. Grief is messy and permanent and changes you forever, and the game respects that truth.

Sam’s journey is driven by obsession. She’s lost her grandfather, who it sounds like raised her, and she can’t let go. She can’t accept that he’s gone, can’t accept that she’ll never talk to him again, can’t accept the finality of his death. The internet rabbit hole she falls down feels authentic to how people spiral when consumed by loss. We’ve all doom scrolled, but imagine doing it while in mourning. Conspiracy theories, supernatural explanations, anything is fair game if it promises to ease the pain or offer the impossible promise of reunion. The game doesn’t judge her for this. It doesn’t frame her as foolish or weak. It simply shows you where that obsession leads when you’re so desperate for answers that you’ll walk through any door, no matter how dangerous.

There’s a moment in the game that perfectly captures how grief distorts your worldview. Sam walks through the wilderness area and says something like, “All this beauty, fed by decay. I can never look at it the same again.” It’s a line that stuck with me because it nails exactly where your mind goes during grief. Everything becomes tinged with loss. Beauty becomes muted. You can’t look at nature the same way when you’re thinking about decomposition. You can’t enjoy anything without it being filtered through the lens of what you’ve lost. That’s what grief does.

The narrative is abstract, which might be divisive. The locations Sam explores feel more like manifestations of trauma than literal places. You’re navigating a psychological landscape as much as a physical one. The house represents the familiar comfort of the past. The neighborhood feels like a distorted version of suburban normalcy. The clock tower with its impossible architecture embodies how grief makes time feel broken and meaningless. Life is chaos. Grief requires no physical perspective. The game trusts you to interpret it based on your own personal experiences.

Documents discovered during the course of your gameplay add meaningful context, fleshing out the world without over-explaining. You’ll piece together information about previous visitors to the house, about the nature of the threshold Sam has crossed, about the price of seeking answers to questions that, deep down, you know are unanswerable. The story earns its emotional beats through atmosphere and theme instead of explicit storytelling, and if you’re willing to meet the game on those terms, it works.

However, and I hate to say this, but Sam herself doesn’t leave much of an impression as a character. The themes of grief resonate powerfully, but Sam as an individual doesn’t stick with you. The voice acting is fine. It gets the job done. But you spend relatively little time getting to know her beyond her grief, and while her situation is compelling, she doesn’t become a fully realized character with distinctive personality traits. You understand her grief intellectually, but you don’t necessarily connect with her emotionally as a person. You feel sorry for her. You feel honored to accompany her on her journey. However, the themes resonate more than the protagonist does, which is a missed opportunity for a game so focused on personal loss.

I stated before that the game has multiple endings. How to trigger them, though, is frustratingly obscure. There’s no clear indication of what actions lead to which outcomes. I got the bad ending on my first playthrough, and the narrative payoff felt earned even with that darker conclusion. It felt true to the game’s themes about grief not always having happy resolutions.

GAMEPLAY & COMBAT:

Heartworm builds its gameplay on classic survival horror foundations, like limited inventory that forces you to make tough decisions about what to carry, puzzle-solving that requires attention and thought, resource management that makes every bullet, or, in this case, every roll of film, precious. Strategic combat where knowing when to fight versus when to run becomes crucial. It’s a structure fans of the genre will recognize immediately and feel comfortable navigating.

Your weapon is a camera, and while this might sound like a Fatal Frame clone, the use is different. You aim with one button, shoot with another. Simple. It’s mechanically more like using a gun than Fatal Frame’s timed capture system. The combat is position-based without lock-on, which could keep you engaged and mobile. Here, though, you can’t move while aiming your camera, reminding me of games Heartworm is so obviously inspired by. You need to think and move quickly to get enemies in your line of sight, especially when dealing with multiple threats or fast-moving enemies in tight spaces.

The camera has mods you can find that add variety to combat, though I wish there were more of them. The triple exposure mod deals damage three times per shot, making it extremely effective and my go-to. It increases your damage output without consuming extra film, which makes it a no-brainer once you find it. The long exposure mod requires you to hold down the button to charge, then release for increased damage. This one’s harder to pull off since enemies won’t give you the time to charge it safely. I didn’t use it much for that reason, but let me know if you used it and how effective it was.

The enemy variety impressed me the more I played. Early on, they seemed generic, but as new types were introduced, I appreciated the thought put into making each one feel distinct. Humanoid enemies yell “HELP ME” as they activate and attack, an unsettling touch that adds to the atmosphere and makes you wonder if these things were once people or if they’re just echoes of suffering. You’ve got ghost-like creatures that crackle like static electricity, statues that remain perfectly still until you get close, then suddenly come to life and trap you in barriers while attacking with both ranged projectiles and melee strikes. There are wolves that move fast and hit hard, spider-like creatures that will quickly overwhelm you with their speed and numbers if you don’t take them down or escape immediately, and slow-moving mannequin enemies that telegraph their attacks but hit devastatingly hard when they connect. Each enemy type requires different tactics, and learning how to handle them efficiently becomes crucial on the harder difficulty where resources are scarce and mistakes are costly. Or, you know what, run away. Mostly the answer is to run away.

Bosses were okay, but I didn’t love fighting them. The first two felt unfair. It was difficult to avoid their attacks, and I didn’t feel like I was learning anything or improving my skills against them. The third and final boss was more gimmicky, but it also felt the most fair. The arenas were remarkable, though I would have liked there to be a way to avoid attacks by ducking behind structures, like the cars in the neighborhood boss battle.

The puzzles are a highlight and another way that Heartworm shows its survival horror DNA. Nothing felt unclear or tedious once I understood what the game was asking of me. You’ll need to pay attention to environmental details, read documents carefully, make connections between information found in different locations, but the game respects your intelligence. Solutions make sense in retrospect even when they’re tricky in the moment. One standout puzzle has you playing chess against the computer for a healing item. A full game! Other chess puzzles have you set up to get a checkmate in one or two moves. And here’s something I discovered embarrassingly late: you can view files you’ve collected by accessing your documents menu, which is helpful for puzzle-solving when you need to reference information from earlier areas. I spent way too long backtracking to re-read things before I realized I could just pull them up on demand.

The pacing is tight. At 4-6 hours for a playthrough, the game doesn’t overstay its welcome. There’s no padding, like side quests, and there’s no artificially extended segments designed to inflate playtime. You’re always moving forward, solving puzzles, exploring new areas, or dealing with combat encounters. The game knows exactly how long it needs to be and doesn’t waste your time.

COMPLETION JOURNEY:

Getting 100% completion in Heartworm is challenging but achievable with patience and practice. The trophy list includes two speed run achievements—one for completing the game in under two hours, and another for under one hour. If these stack, and I think they probably do, you can potentially get all achievements in two runs, though I’d recommend three or more. That way you’ll experience the game as the devs intended.

Hard mode is, uh, hard, but not in a cheap way. You get fewer healing items scattered throughout the world, which means every health pack becomes precious. There’s no inventory expansion from what I encountered, so you’re stuck with limited carrying capacity the entire game, forcing tougher decisions about what to take and what to leave behind. Enemies are significantly tougher to take down—they absorb more damage, they hit harder, and, I believe, they aggro more easily. Resource management becomes critical. You can’t just shoot everything that moves, but I did find that film was in enough abundance that you don’t have to worry about that too much. The healing items, though, are rare and you’ll need to become comfortable exploring in low health so you don’t waste them. I had to restart my first hard mode attempt because I wasted healing items early on poor decisions and couldn’t get past the second boss with the resources I had left.

The most difficult achievement for me, though,was the under-one-hour speed run. You need to know every puzzle solution by heart, plan optimal routes through every area to minimize backtracking, and execute with few mistakes. Every second counts. However, I discovered you can start back at a save point and avoid doing the entire run in one go, which makes it more manageable than I initially thought. You can practice individual segments, optimize your route section by section, and chain together clean executions. It’s still demanding, but it’s not the nightmarish single-sitting marathon I feared. The no-death run is achievable once you understand enemy patterns, know where threats spawn, and have mastered resource management. It’s tense, but fair.

The game does have some technical issues worth mentioning that can complicate completion attempts. I encountered a bug where a statue enemy died but the rock hazards it spawned on the ground didn’t despawn properly. I couldn’t walk around them, couldn’t destroy them, and walking into them killed me, which was particularly frustrating when it happened during what was otherwise a clean run. I also had a weird glitch where defeating a boss didn’t put the necessary key item in my inventory to access the next location. The boss died, the cutscene played, but my inventory remained unchanged. I had to reload a save and fight the boss again, and thankfully it worked the second time, but if this had happened during a no-death or speed run, it could have been a complete run-ender through no fault of my own.

One more note about navigation: the map shows which sub-area you’re in, like the overlook in the park, but it doesn’t provide a cursor showing your exact position within that area. You know you’re in the Overlook section, but not specifically within that space. This can make navigation trickier than it needs to be, especially in larger environments like the park where multiple paths twist and interconnect. I found myself getting turned around more than once, unsure if I was heading toward my objective or back where I came from.

Despite these issues, the game is technically stable overall. No crashes to desktop, solid and consistent performance throughout, no game-breaking bugs that permanently blocked progress. For a focused 4-6 hour experience from a small development team, the completion journey feels appropriately challenging without being unfair or artificially padded.

I did play the game on Steam Deck a lot, and it worked well. It earned its “verified” status on Steam.

It’s not all roses here, though. I have some criticisms.

CRITICISMS:

While Heartworm succeeds in many areas and earns its recommendation, it has some notable shortcomings worth addressing honestly.

The camera mods feel underutilized and represent a missed opportunity for build variety. You get triple exposure, which is excellent and becomes your default, and long exposure, which is situational and harder to use effectively. And that’s it. Two mods for the entire game. More variety here would have allowed for different playstyles, like maybe a wide-angle mod for crowd control, maybe a zoom mod for safe long-range combat, maybe a mod that slows enemies or creates environmental effects. As it stands, you’ll find the triple exposure mod fairly early, realize it’s superior to the default camera in almost every situation, and stick with it for the rest of the game with little reason to experiment. Combat depth suffers as a result.

The bosses connect to the story only in abstract, symbolic ways, which feels thematically appropriate but unsatisfying. While they work okay as gameplay challenges, the thematic connection feels loose and undefined. If you’re looking for bosses that clearly tie into specific story beats or represent explicit concepts from Sam’s journey, you’ll be left wanting. They’re more like atmospheric encounters than narrative milestones, which works for the game’s abstract approach but also means they don’t contribute much to your understanding of the story.

The story itself could be more fleshed out, causing the abstract narrative to become a double-edged sword. It works thematically, since grief and death don’t have clear answers, so the game mirrors that ambiguity in its storytelling. But there’s a line between meaningfully abstract storytelling that rewards interpretation and simply being underexplained. Heartworm sometimes feels like it’s walking that line, and which side it falls on will depend on your tolerance for ambiguity. Some players will find the abstract approach compelling and thematically resonant. Others will finish the game feeling like they didn’t understand what happened or what it all meant. I lean toward the former, but I can see how someone could feel frustrated by the lack of concrete answers.

The technical issues, while not game-breaking or frequent, are worth noting because they can impact critical moments. The statue enemy hazard bug that killed me and the boss item glitch that forced a reload show that some rough edges remain. These aren’t deal-breakers, but they’re the kind of polish issues that can turn a great experience into merely a good one.

These problems, plus Sam being a bit forgettable, don’t make it bad, but they do prevent it from reaching the heights of genre standouts like Crow Country, which manages to nail both the retro aesthetic and modern quality-of-life improvements while telling a more cohesive story. Heartworm is a solid entry in the retro horror space. It’s a good game that respects its inspirations but not an exceptional one that transcends them. Now, let’s talk about my final verdict.

FINAL VERDICT:

Heartworm is a solid horror experience that successfully captures what made 90s survival horror special. At $15 for a focused 4-6 hours. It offers good value for horror fans looking for something that respects the classics without simply copying them beat-for-beat.

But it’s not without its flaws. Sam is a forgettable protagonist despite the strong themes she’s meant to embody. The story walks the line between purposefully abstract and underexplained in ways that will frustrate some players. The camera combat works well but could have been expanded significantly with more mod options to allow for build variety and different playstyles.

It’s because of this that the game earns a Gold chainsaw.

When considering my tier ranking, I see Heartworm as a solid, respectable experience worth your time and money, but not genre-defining or revolutionary. If you love retro horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, if you’re drawn to dark narratives about grief and loss that don’t offer easy answers, or if you just want a tight, focused horror experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome and respects your time, Heartworm is absolutely worth checking out. It won’t revolutionize the genre or blow your mind, but it earns its place among the solid modern entries keeping classic survival horror alive and relevant.

Heartworm ranks in the B tier.

For horror gamers and dark narrative enthusiasts, this is an easy recommendation. Just know what you’re getting into: a respectful homage to 90s survival horror that succeeds more often than it stumbles, with strong atmosphere and interesting themes, but also a forgettable protagonist and some missed opportunities for deeper systems.

OUTRO:

That’s it. Write your scary thoughts in the comments. And please, make sure you subscribe so I can stay motivated to bring you more thoughtful commentary on horror games. Be safe, check your closets and under your beds before you go to sleep, and I’ll be back soon.

Imagine this: you’re a quarter of the way into a game, and an elevator doesn’t work. Or you’re in a boss fight and you can’t switch weapons or access your inventory. Or you’re an achievement hunter and there are trophies that are bugged.

In Tormented Souls 2, I experienced all those issues and more. The response was a patch that moved players’ saves into another folder, causing panic because it looked like the saves were deleted. This was rolled back, and thankfully, a beta patch was released that gave some temporary relief. The next patch promises to fix around 60 problems. 60! Unacceptable. Someone greenlit shipping in this condition, and that’s not okay. It’s insulting.

Why do we accept buggy games at launch as a way of life? We spend our hard-earned money on games we’re excited about at premium prices, only to discover they need another month of testing. Even the good ones ship with surface-level QA. It doesn’t have to be that way.

I’ve beaten Tormented Souls 2 multiple times, and I’ve earned every achievement. My Steam profile is public if you want to see that for yourself. It’s a great game, one of the best survival horror experiences I’ve had in awhile.

But the technical problems are impossible to ignore.

Despite all that, I’m still going to recommend this game. I’m going to tell you which chainsaw in my rating system that it earns and where it fits in my tier list. Why put in so much effort? The answer isn’t just one thing, it’s everything working together, and it begins the moment you see Caroline and Anna aboard a train.

SETTING & ATMOSPHERE:

The game opens with a cozy train ride to Villa Hess, a remote Chilean town. Two sisters are traveling together. The older-appearing one, Caroline, has told her younger-appearing sister, Anna, that they’re going to a spa retreat, but the truth is they’re heading to a convent where Anna is to get specialized mental healthcare. She needs treatment for the trauma she suffered in the first game, which will be discussed later. While Caroline sleeps, her sister draws. Well, I wouldn’t call it drawing, really. It’s more like violent scribbling while her eyes are rolled in the back of her head. Anna draws truly horrifying images, and the bad part is that whatever she draws comes true.

When you arrive, the Chilean setting creates an immediate unfamiliarity. I like it when horror games are set in unfamiliar locations, because otherwise, some of the fear can get diluted by recognition. Villa Hess, though, feels a bit alien, and that feeds a low hum of anxiety. The convent is massive, with multiple levels, outdoor areas, a dilapidated prison, a torture museum, and a bunch of other unsettling locales, interconnected in ways you discover through exploration. The Christian iconography is horror fuel. Crucifixes, religious art, and the architecture are inherently grim when filtered through the right lens.

The darkness becomes an enemy, itself. Tormented Souls 2 is literally dark, making it hard to see in certain areas even after adjusting the brightness. That’s intentional, because the dark will kill you. At first, you can hold a lighter to illuminate your surroundings and stay alive, or you can use your weapon in a lit area. If enemies mob you in the dark, you have to run toward the light before you can fight back. Suddenly you’re strategizing in ways most horror games don’t demand. Not only are you managing health and ammo, you’re also managing positioning and light sources.

The village is small, but the verticality makes it feel much larger. Everything interconnects masterfully. You’ll unlock shortcuts to new paths that connect in unexpected ways. There’s a lot of backtracking, but once you learn the optimal routes, it doesn’t feel like a slog. The exploration rewards you constantly with weapons, upgrades, healing items, ammunition, and lore. The game wants you to poke into every corner, so make sure you do that, even if it’s scary and you just want to run to safety.

The game doesn’t rely on jump scares, but the few it has work. I almost had to change my underwear in an area where corpses were hung and one of them made this guttural noise. Looking back, it was obvious, but in the moment, it was effective. The real scares come from the environments themselves. The convent’s imagery feels oppressive. The school section introduces cooing baby dolls that suddenly come to life and attack viciously. There are distant sounds of people screaming, and sometimes someone or something will bang on the door of the room you’re in. I think that’s more genuinely unsettling than placing a ton of jump scares for no reason.

This isn’t a game that makes you scream. It’s a game that makes you tense, cautious, and always aware that something could go wrong. That’s harder to pull off than cheap jump scares, and this game nails it.

But Villa Hess isn’t a random location. There’s a reason Caroline brought her impossibly younger twin sister to this nightmare, and understanding that requires going back to where this all started: Winterlake Hospital.

STORY AND THEMES:

Tormented Souls 2 is a direct sequel to the 2021 original. In that game, Caroline explored an abandoned hospital and discovered VHS tapes that let her travel through time. To save her long-lost sister, she manipulated the timeline, which is why Anna is 14 years younger than her, even though they’re twins. That time manipulation had consequences, and Anna’s been struggling with severe trauma ever since. That’s why they’re in Villa Hess.

When they arrive, things quickly go wrong. Caroline wakes up from a nap alone, only to realize that Anna’s missing. After a frantic search, she finds her in a chapel being manhandled by nuns. That’s when we meet Mother Lucia, who confronts Caroline directly before a particularly large nun restrains her and puts her in a sleeper hold. Nite nite, Caroline.

Caroline wakes up with huge needles driven through her body. After pulling them out and a moment of wooziness, she gets dressed and embarks on the wildest walk of shame in gaming history. Her goals are to find Anna and get out of Villa Hess alive.

The story doesn’t try to be philosophically complex, but it doesn’t need to be. The themes are clear-cut: sisterhood, sacrifice, and doing the right thing. Caroline manipulated time to save Anna in the first game, and now she’s willing to face whatever darkness lurks in Villa Hess to protect her. It’s not Silent Hill 2 with layers of psychological symbolism, and that’s fine. Sometimes a straightforward survival horror story told well is exactly what you need.

Villa Hess is populated by NPCs who have their own reasons for being there. One that stands out is Miguel. Like Caroline, he’s driven by a personal mission to save someone. His story arc is compelling, and he plays a significant role in how things unfold. Around the midpoint, Caroline describes the events of the first game during a cutscene with him, which helps orient players who skipped the original.

Lore items scattered throughout fill in the narrative’s gaps. The convent’s dark history, Mother Lucia’s motivations, and the gradual corruption of Villa Hess come together in a story more cohesive than a lot of games in the genre. Players are rewarded through exploration via documents, journals, and environmental storytelling. The more you learn, the more Mother Lucia makes sense as the game’s antagonist.

And speaking of, Mother Lucia steals every scene she’s in. The voice actress is exceptional, with this strained quality that makes her menacing. She’s not evil for the sake of being evil. Her conviction is absolute, and that unwavering belief makes her terrifying.

A compelling story gets you invested, but solid gameplay keeps you there. Fortunately, Tormented Souls 2 delivers on the mechanics front.

COMBAT AND MECHANICS:

The fixed camera angles and tank controls immediately evoke classic Resident Evil. If you’re worried about tank controls, there’s only one puzzle that requires them, and it’s brief and doesn’t require much skill.

Combat offers solid weapon variety with both ranged and melee options. You’re constantly making decisions about whether to fight through groups and burn resources or run and risk missing something important. Boss fights have gimmicks, but they’re the fun kind that feel like puzzles to figure out rather than cheap tricks.

Enemy variety keeps things interesting. Standard undead shamble around, but then you encounter spider-human hybrids that are terrifying and tough to take down, especially in groups or when you’re low on ammo for your stronger weapons. The cemetery has ghosts that grab you and literally suck the life out of you. Each enemy type demands different tactics.

Enemy placement keeps you on edge, because it’s unpredictable. Enemies sometimes track together, and uncertainty creates constant dread. You’re also forced to decide whether you fight through and risk wasting resources, or run and potentially miss something important hidden in that room. As horror game fans, such is our calling.

Combat is nuanced. You can’t just blast away. For example, when an enemy drops from the ceiling, there’s a brief moment where it’s invulnerable, so you have to wait before attacking. Downed enemies might be stunned rather than dead, and the music clues you in on which is which. Also, if your weapon still auto-aims at a supposedly dead enemy, that means it’s stunned. Let it recover, then finish it off. Different enemy types have different behaviors, and learning those patterns makes a difference.

Resource scarcity is brutal, especially on the highest difficulty. It’s worse than most survival horror games I’ve played. Even using a guide to collect every piece of ammo and every healing item in the game, I still found myself resorting to melee weapons during the final boss fight. The devs could have been more generous, maybe by offering a little more ammo and healing items at the final checkpoint than what is currently available.

This game is puzzle-heavy. You’ll need either a great memory or a phone full of screenshots. If you see a picture or diagram, you should take a pic. You might need that information several puzzles later. There were a couple of really clever ones that made you feel kinda smart. One of the numerous candle puzzles you need to solve to make it to the other side, a kind of otherworld, requires a bit of math, for example.

Difficulty settings matter. Assisted mode gives you the most resources, auto-saves at checkpoints, and regenerates your health from danger to caution automatically. Standard reduces resources and switches to manual saves with a limited number available. Enemies also need more damage to bring down. Tormented cranks everything up even further with fewer resources, including healing items that become rare and restore less health. There are fewer manual saves, and enemies are significantly tougher and deal more damage. Choose wisely based on how much punishment you want to endure.

All those difficulty tweaks and resource decisions play out across some genuinely impressive environments. The game doesn’t only play well; it looks and sounds stunning, too..

VISUALS AND AUDIO:

The graphics in Tormented Souls 2 are incredible, a massive upgrade from the first game. The developers clearly put love into this. The art direction works perfectly with the visuals to create something special. Even your own shadow can fool you and make you think something’s following you.

I can’t think of another modern horror game doing what Tormented Souls 2 does. Games like Crow Country went for that deliberate PS2 aesthetic, and plenty of others use fixed cameras, but nothing else combines this level of graphical polish with genuine fixed camera perspectives and old-school survival horror design. The visuals here rival big studio games, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Every major area is visually impressive. The convent’s scope is surprising. The school looks grand and imposing, the kind of place that was clearly a source of pride before everything went to hell. The environmental storytelling works through the visuals too, like occult symbols drawn in what looks like blood on the walls and floor, the kind of imagery you’d expect from evil rituals or satanic worship.

The enemy designs are solid with good variety for a game this size, and they’re genuinely scary. The zombies that suddenly reveal chainsaw blade hands are nightmare fuel. The ghosts draining your life force create a horrifying visual, and the sound of babies cooing as they toddle on their way to kill you is deeply unsettling.

A cool detail about the graphics is what the shinies look like. They’re not just glowing orbs. You can actually tell which item you’re picking up. I want this to become a trend in all video game genres.

The audio design is just as strong. The music fits perfectly, creating atmosphere throughout. When an enemy spots you, the music shifts to unmistakable terror, the kind that makes your throat close, and suddenly you realize you’ve forgotten to breathe. Save rooms have melancholic yet comforting music that you soon associate with safety, with the absence of danger. It’s pure relief.

Every movement creates sound. Walking, switching weapons, firing ammo all register as unique. The puzzle sound design deserves mention, too. When you’re examining items and rotating dials, each interaction has its own weighty sound that makes everything feel tactile and deliberate.

Speaking of tactile, the haptic feedback is comprehensive and well-executed. Everything from firing weapons to clicking through puzzle dials gives you proper controller response. It’s one of those details that shows the developers cared about the complete experience, not just what is seen and heard.

When a game is this spot-on with the fundamentals, it makes you want to see everything it has to offer. You want to push through to 100% completion because the experience deserves it. This makes it all the more frustrating when technical problems get in the way of finishing what they built.

JOURNEY TO 100%:

The platinum for Tormented Souls 2 is difficult. I put in four playthroughs total: one blind run to experience the game on my own terms, then three more following Optinooby’s guides. His channel has been invaluable for getting these trophies, and I don’t think I could have pulled this off without his help.

The trophy list is standard, but the requirements are challenging. You’ll need to complete the game on all three difficulty levels. You’ll need to play without opening the map. And there’s the trophy that made me question my life choices: completing the game without saving. That was the hardest one by far, and I have no desire to do that again anytime soon. Some of you trophy hunters out there will enjoy that challenge. You and I are not the same.

The technical problems spill into achievement completion. When I started the game, two trophies were completely broken. A beta patch eventually fixed them, but if you’re thinking about going for 100% completion, consider this your warning. This game had issues at launch, and while they’ve been addressed, trophy hunters should know what they’re getting into.

And that brings me to the part of this review I wish I didn’t have to write.

CRITICISMS:

Tormented Souls 2 released in an unacceptable state. I don’t care how good a game is underneath its problems. Releasing a product that doesn’t work properly is not okay, and I’m not going to soften that stance regardless of the circumstances.

I got soft-locked multiple times. The game crashed on me. Weapon switching broke. My inventory locked up and I couldn’t access it. Elevators stopped working. This is unacceptable quality control, period.

The frustrating part is that these technical issues overshadow what is otherwise a fantastic game. When Tormented Souls 2 works, it’s incredible. But the fact that I have to qualify that with “when it works” is a problem.

There’s one design choice that might bother some players, though it didn’t bother me. The boss fights are gimmicky. They’re as much puzzles as they are traditional combat encounters. I enjoyed figuring them out. Each boss felt like solving a unique challenge rather than just dodging and shooting. But if you’re expecting straightforward boss battles where you learn attack patterns and fight, you might find this approach frustrating or unsatisfying.

That’s it for actual design criticisms. Everything else about this game ranges from good to excellent, which makes the technical problems all the more infuriating. Where does that leave us?

FINAL JUDGMENT:

In a properly functioning state, Tormented Souls 2 would be a Platinum Chainsaw game. The atmosphere, puzzles, combat, visuals, audio design. Everything comes together to create one of my favorite recently released horror games. This is the kind of game that reminds you why you fell in love with survival horror.

But I can’t ignore what happened at launch. I can’t pretend the problems didn’t exist because a patch eventually fixed them. That’s not how this works.

Tormented Souls 2 earns a GOLD CHAINSAW.

That it’s still earning gold despite everything I’ve complained about should tell you how exceptional this game is. Most games with this many technical problems would be looking at a Used Chainsaw or worse. But the core experience here is too strong to dismiss.

If you’re a die-hard fan of fixed camera Resident Evil games, you need to play this. But wait until it’s fully patched. Don’t jump in until you’re confident the technical issues are resolved. This game deserves to be experienced properly, not through a haze of crashes.

I did try playing on Steam Deck, and it was a letdown. I had to downgrade settings just to make it playable, which made everything look unrefined. I didn’t enjoy it.

The Gold Chainsaw accounts for everything: the highs, the lows, and the unacceptable technical state at launch. But my chainsaw ratings and my horror tier rankings measure different things entirely.

TIER PLACEMENT:

When this game is firing on all cylinders, it delivers exactly what classic survival horror fans have been craving. The atmosphere is oppressive. The tension is thick. The darkness creates dread. The puzzles are cerebral. Combat is dangerous. Every element works together to create a game that belongs in the upper echelon of the genre.

The technical issues keep it from being a perfect game, but they don’t diminish what it accomplishes as a horror experience. This is one of the best examples of fixed camera survival horror in years, and it deserves recognition for that achievement.

Tormented Souls 2 earns its place in the S tier.

OUTRO:

I’m James with Horror 100. I review horror games after getting all achievements. We will never accept a review copy or a sponsorship within the industry. Let’s bring integrity back to game reviews. We deserve it.

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